Dr. Amen is amazing.
He's a blessing in our lives.
Dr. Amen did this thing on his computer
that tells us what part of the brain he can recover
and a lot of it can recover and already,
we've only been working with him for a short while,
there's been a lot of improvement.
I hadn't seen him pick up his guitar
in like eight years.
He's constantly writing again,
he's playing music,
like a door has opened for him.
He's been a lot more attentive.
It's the medicine Dr. Amen gave me
to take away attention deficit disorder.
It's already been an amazing improvement.
Well Steffanie says her husband,
actor Gary Busey,
thought he was going through life perfectly
and believed nothing was wrong with his brain
after his near fatal motorcycle accident.
But Dr. Daniel Amen says Gary's left frontal lobe
where cognitive skills like impulse control happen
was literally destroyed, take a look.
I've been working with Gary
for a little over five months.
When he first came to see us,
I felt so sad for him.
His memory, his judgment,
his impulse control were just not good.
He was really cognitively impaired.
When things don't go quite right,
he can be irritable.
Boom, can have this flash of temper.
Why?
What's going on in his brain?
If you read Gary's book,
he clearly had ADHD as a child.
In college, he played center.
Offensive linemen have more head trauma.
As an actor, he had some issues with drug abuse.
Drugs, they damage your brain.
He had a tumor in his sinuses.
He had his sinuses,
your brain's right behind it, radiated.
He had a very severe motorcycle accident.
He crashed his right skull against the curb.
If you hit one side,
you can see more damage on the other side.
It's called a coup, contrecoup.
That's clearly what we see with Gary.
Your brain is very soft,
about the consistency of soft butter
and it's housed in really hard skull.
When you have a traumatic brain injury,
your soft brain goes up against the ridges in the skull
and causes damage
which can then damage your life.
These are spec scans.
Here's a healthy scan
which shows full even symmetrical activity.
Gary's scan, there's a big difference.
When you see the holes,
that means seriously low blood flow.
It's almost miraculous
he's doing as well as he's doing
with a brain that is so seriously damaged.
Let's have a hand.
(audience applause)
Well Dr. Amen, thanks for being here.
This really was a profoundly traumatic brain injury.
Gary hurt two really important areas of his brain,
his temporal lobes, memory, mood stability,
temper control, learning,
but the most damage was in the front part of his brain,
it's an area called the prefrontal cortex,
focus, forethought, judgment, impulse control,
organization, planning, empathy,
learning from the mistakes you make.
So what did you find when he first came to your clinic
five months ago?
So the image on the right
what you're seeing is full, even symmetrical activity.
In Gary's brain, you can see these big holes
and what the holes mean is they're seriously low blood flow.
But in the left frontal lobe,
it's not low,
that area died.
And it's amazing, as I've gotten to know Gary
and really love Gary,
how functional he is
even though one of the most important parts of your brain
was seriously hurt.
Yeah and are there parts of his brain
that are taking over some of the functions
and he's retraining in those areas?
Yes.
So what have you seen changewise in him
since he started working with Dr. Amen?
First of all, even since the brain injury,
he's always remained an amazing actor
who's had an amazing memory,
he could always remember his lines
and that's always been a blessing, thank God.
Point Break.
Went right back to work after his brain surgery,
first movie was Point Break,
then all these other blockbusters.
So he's always been able to work
which is amazing, thank God
but in the home life, I'd like to say
that he is so much more attentive to me,
always asking me what can I do for you,
what can I get for you
whereas before it was just like his own stuff.